It may only be possible to operate a Bill of Obligations within small groups of people. A separate part/version of the bill could declare how groups behave to each other, super-groups to super-groups, etcetera, until a hierarchy is built, culminating with international relationships.
Large groups of humans always break in to factions. Even the clergy argue amongst themselves! So, perhaps the bill is most detailed at its lowest level of implementation.

Here is some simple HTML for bloggers.

<a href="http://conservativelawyers.com/Bill%20of%20Rights%20and%20Obligations06.pdf">Link Text</a>

This page explains it

Think you're probably right about the name. Cleo has just sent me this.

http://conservativelawyers.com/Bill%20of%20Rights%20and%20Obligations06.pdf

Intersting read. Good to know others have already thought of it and started doing the hard work.

Sorry I don't know how you manage to embed a hyperlink in one of these comments. Could you tell me for future reference?

What about the animals (except dogs and cats)

What about life on other planets!

Nice idea! My first thought would be to change the name – most people would not understand the term bill of obligations – it actually sounds like some financial product!

One route would be to take an exiting bill of rights and then invert it. "You have the right to remain silent" becomes, "everyone is obliged to let others remain silent".

You end up with basically the same thing, but expressed in a way that is socially cohesive – perhaps? After all, some 'rights' seem to assume that people exist in isolation.

I agree with richGB about the importance of the word obligation too.

From my point of view the scope of the bill should be for all of humankind. This no doubt raises infinite problems, but then again maybe it makes things a lot more simple. ive always been suspicious of the way categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, nationhood, sexuality and a lot more, while needed in terms of political solidarity for those without power, actually exploit the masses and drive us away from such things as community and obligations to each other.

However, such short-hand, such language, not only makes it easier to talk about the world but it also stresses our differences, and specifically the cultural differences between us. It makes us aware of being different from one another, while hiding the obvious fact of our common humanity – that we are more alike than we are different.

It would a very interesting exercise to attempt a 'Bill of Obligations'. Already my engineering mind is making shrill pleas regarding the impossibility of tackling 'cultural differences', 'spirituality' and 'good versus evil' – but I always did think too logically.

Perhaps the first thing to do would be to establish the scope of the bill. Is this for all humankind?

I think it is quite feasable to writer a Bill of Obligations which would sound like the US Bill of Rights, do the same job and, though I am not a lawyer, be enforceable in law in a similar way.

Would people who come here like to try and see if we can together come up with a workable Bill of Obligations?